February 8, 2011

DOE-Mandated Arabic Classes Coming to a School Near You?

In a taxpayer-funded program, students will now be required to take Arabic language and culture classes. In addition to the Arabic language, the grant requires "culture, government, art, traditions and history" as part of the curriculum.

Some Students at Mansfield ISD schools could soon be learning Arabic as a required language. The school district wants students at certain schools to take Arabic language and culture classes as part of a federally funded grant.

The Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grant was awarded to Mansfield ISD last summer by the U.S. Department of Education.

As part of the five-year $1.3 million grant, Arabic classes would be mandatory at Cross Timbers Intermediate School and Kenneth Davis Elementary School. The program would also be optional for students at T. A. Howard Middle School and Summit High School.

Parents at Cross Timbers say they were caught off-guard by the program, and were surprised the district only told them about it in a meeting Monday night between parents and Mansfield ISD Superintendent Bob Morrison.

The DOE has identified Arabic as a "language of the future." But parent Joseph Balson was frustrated by the past. "Why are we just now finding out about it?" asked Balson. "It's them (Mansfield ISD) applying for the grant, getting it approved and them now saying they'll go back and change it only when they were caught trying to implement this plan without parents knowing about it."

Some parents were rightly concerned over the implied religious aspect.

"The school doesn't teach Christianity, so I don't want them teaching Islam," said parent Baron Kane. During Monday's meeting Morrison stressed the curriculum would not be about religion, but about Arabic language and culture, similar to the Spanish curriculum already in place in the district.

The FLAP grant requiring Arabic was awarded to only five school districts across the country, including Mansfield.

Mark Steyn has explained the real implications of an "Arabic school and the Arabic language" (hat tip - Pamela Geller):

"It shows how we mischaracterized, we willfully misunderstand Islam. Yes, on the face of it, yes, Arabic is a language. In a sense there would be no difference between opening a foreign language school -- a Spanish language school or a french language school -- but in fact Arabic is more than a language. It is explicated the language of Islam, so in that sense it is part of the Islamic religious imperial project. Radical Islam advances through the Arabic language. And you go all kinds of places that aren't in the Arab world now, like Pakistan, Indonesia, Central Asia, the Balkans, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Canada and the United States, and you will here those Imams preaching in Arabic. Arabic is not just another language like French or Italian, it is the spearhead of an ideological project that is deeply opposed to the United States."

This is America. We are an English speaking nation. We have distinct and traditional American cultural values. We have some Americans in our population who have difficulty speaking a coherent sentence. We have many who cannot construct a complete and proper sentence.

Yet we find the time and the money to educate youth in Arabic and Arabic culture. ...

And as for "Arab being a language of the future" ... lets take a quick look at how Arabs have done up to now in Nobel Prizes in science and medicine. A quick count shows 126 Jewish Nobel Prize Winners in science and medicine [that's from a pool of 12 million Jews which are 0.2% of the World's Population (2 out of every 1,000 people)] ... and a mere 3 Arab/Islamic Nobel Prize Winners {from a pool of 1.4 BILLION Muslims which are 20% of the world's population.